Net Neutrality Debate Intensifies In Canada 163
MrShaggy tips us to news that the debate over Net Neutrality in Canada is coming to the forefront following the recent discovery that Bell Canada was throttling P2P traffic on the access it had sold to wholesalers. Michael Geist's blog notes a video recording of comments from a member of the Canadian government, as well as coverage from Canadian media. From Ars Technica:
"The Canadian government has in the past pushed the CRTC to deregulate the telecom industry, an approach still backed by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. Prentice also wants to stay out of the current net neutrality debate, which would seem to be a de facto vote against the idea. He was asked in the House of Commons this week whether his government would do anything about the current Bell/Rogers traffic-shaping controversy. According to the Globe & Mail, Prentice said only that "we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and Internet service providers on the other."
You canadians are all alike... (Score:2, Interesting)
Does that only strike me as having come straight out of a South Park episode?
Re:You canadians are all alike... (Score:5, Insightful)
CANADA:
What will likely happen is that Rogers (the consumer) will located a new ISP provider that will not throttle their bandwidth and then say, "Goodbye Bell". That's how the free market works.
We vote with our dollars.
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Who are you to make that judgment call? What you call "waste" I might call "useful". I repeat: Don't be elitist and decide what should or should not exist on the web.
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What will likely happen is that Teksaavy (the consumer) will located a new ISP provider that will not throttle their bandwidth and then say, "Goodbye Bell". That's how the free market works.
We vote with our dollars.
Re:You canadians are all alike... (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market works great, when there's competition. But there's no competition going on here. Little guys like teksavvy only exist because Bell is mandated to lease their lines.
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Perhaps a similar law needs to be laid-down for internet providers like Teksaavy: Access to Bell's lines without restriction.
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Perhaps a similar law needs to be laid-down for internet providers like Teksaavy: Access to Bell's lines without restriction.
The law you suggest already exists. That's not the issue here. The issue is the interpretation and enforcement of that law.
They (the CRTC, roughly the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) have already done what you say. Forcing Bell to wholesale their lines is the only reason that independent ISPs (like Teksavvy exist).
But, of course, the big cable and telephone companies really, really hate having to lease out their lines at fair prices, so they are doing everything in their power to weaken the restrictions th
There *are* no other ISP providers. (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, Bell owns pretty much all the lines, the "last mile" required for any ADSL connection. That leaves pretty much Roger's as their only major competition, as they are a cable-internet provider (they are not a consumer).
There are many other ISP's that offer ADSL services, but they all use Bell lines, and the big issue currently is that Bell is throttling the traffic of their customers. Many of these companies, such as my own provider - Teksavvy - offer reasonable and good service, and have been quite vocal about how Bell is interfering with their services.
So really, the only choice other than Bell is... well.. Rogers. Unfortunately Roger's has a lack of affordable premium options (static IP's, etc), also throttles, port-blocks, and is in general known for service no better than Bell.
That means that:
viable options for the average consumer = 0
The saddest part is that Bell is still getting a cut from all the companies that are leasing lines to provide ADSL service, while doing almost nothing themselves. I would know, because as I've mentioned before, I'm on an ADSL connection that is craptastically slow due to the fact that Bell has overextended the connection to their CO, rather than adding a local repeater/node.
The only other option I could think of would be the local hydro company's (in Toronto at least) wireless offerings, but unfortunately those only work in certain areas, and mine isn't one of them (I've heard that the service is fairly decent though).
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- Bell which is lower in price, but throttles the bandwidth due to limited cable availability.
- Rogers which is higher in price, but uses that higher cost to buy extra cables & doesn't need to throttle.
- (Are you sure there's no third company? Like AT&T or Sprint or MCI?)
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So you see Teksaavy DOES have options. Each of these 2 choices has a drawback (throttling on one hand; higher price on the other), but that's life in a nutshell. You have to weigh the p
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So where do you get this notion that teksavvy can get better service from Rogers?
Lame suggestion (Score:2)
Yeah... great idea.
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- (Are you sure there's no third company? Like AT&T or Sprint or MCI?)
For people asking about Rogers. Rogers does not deal with DSL service at the last mile. Which is why there is very few providers like 3web.
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Both ways.
But seriously: I really do love my 750 kbit connection. I can download an entire season of Lost or 24 or Galactica in a single day. I can't complain abou
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The other issue is, of course, that a lot of people are paying for more than a 750kbps connection, but can't get it due to issues beyond their own ISP's control at the moment (crappy Bell infrastructure).
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Some ISPs do this already. The cost of serving a large number of users, though, is prohibitive. Some ISPs like Primus use a hybrid approach, a
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If Bell's infrastructure is like SaskTel's, that wouldn't work. Here in Saskatoon if you only locate DSLAMs in the CO you'd only be able to r
Bell Also Wants to Remove Unlimited Downloads (Score:2)
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What you goddammed fuckingly terminally stupid yankees fail to get with your pigheadedly assinine fear of whatever the government decides to do is that there cannot be a free market when the last mile is totally unregulated private property.
You yanks are so fucking blinded by your cultural hangups against the governme
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Yes true.
But at least we don't have a 60% government tax rate, or four months waiting time at the government-mismanaged hospital. Keeping the idiot U.S. politicians as powerless as possible is generally a better idea than Canada's approach of letting them run amuck.
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Five percent less tax in Canada than in the US. (http://www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2002/cantaxadv_e.html)
Now, let's compare Canada and the US health care systems with relevant information instead of crap you pull out of your arse:
US Canada
Life expectancy 77.8 80.2
Infant mortality 6.8 5.3
Physicians
Re:You canadians are all alike... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean a few selected stores selling a small selection of goods to a price that's marginally lower than in the real world, without any possible competition at all since the airport decides who should be allowed to sell?
Sounds pretty much like what we'd get without net neutrality, and what the big telcos would like to see.
What the hell. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What the hell. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What the hell. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the fine print usually equates to putting on a really thick winter coat under a bulletproof vest; yeah, it's technically extra protection, but if you're at the point where you need it, barring a miracle, you're probably already screwed. You can put anything in a contract, but if it says that you don't have to support your other obligations within the contract, it won't stand.
IANAL and I only took 1 business law class in high school, so I'm more than likely wrong.
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Net neutrality is a different debate entirely.
Re:What the hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a society where all our treated equally under the law, such a distinction cannot be made.
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That's the problem withh p2p protocols like bittorrrent. They essentially exploit the fact that the more streams you have the more bandwidth you get, thus (depending on how you look at it) either making their download have higher priority or make yours have a lower priority.
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Segmented TCP transfers such as with download managers should not be, with modern TCP stacks, normally faster than single ones except in cases of major packet loss (in which case the network is already screwed).
Bittorrent is dependent on lots of other networks; it goes slower than a single TCP transfer from a fast network.
Thanks to mo
Re:What the hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Bittorrents take UNFAIR advantage (Score:2)
See http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080327-one-technical-key-to-net-neutrality-solving-tcp-congestion.html [arstechnica.com]
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You're missing the real problem. I'm gonna pull numbers out of my ass, because I have sinus problems and pulling them out my nose right now would prove impractical. If net company X has a total of 100M of ban
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Here is an ISP I do some work for.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2207/2387674726_e4d4654e34_o.png [flickr.com]
It is a 20 meg unmetered pipe, but he has numerous 10 meg burst piped customers (then throttled down to 2 meg). As you can see he has only exceeded 10 megabits a few times at peak hours.
You have to watch a graph like this (using cacti,snmp scanner w/rrdtool etc) and see if you're banging off the limiter. I
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The fairness problem happens when we get to the shared portions of the network. Since the bandwidth footprint of a bittorrent client is up to 1,000 times larger than a web client, the torrents always win the competition for the shared resource.
None of us should have a problem with
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You missed the point. He said:
"Why should my Hentai torrents be faulted when I am merely using what I paid for?" [Emphasis Added}
Why shouldn't you GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR?!
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1. He is paying for a connection from his LAN to the ISP. This connection is 6Mbps.
2. He is paying to have his packets forwarded from his ISP and the rest of the Internet. The speed of THIS forwarding depends on the combined throughput of the particular route taken by his packets.
3. He is NOT paying for a guaranteed 6Mbps endpoint-to-endpoint connection. When his 6Mbps of torrent traffic gets to the ISP, his packets HAVE TO SHARE with all the other
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Although in our case here in Canada, Bell has both increased prices and degraded services and now they're forcing that stratagy on the 3rd
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The idea of traffic grooming is fine as long as the customer knows what he is buying into. Most customers wouldn't know bandwidth grooming from overbooking & this is why it happens.
If they did know, if they were made aware of the fact that their spanking new DSL advertised at XKb/s is worth X/10 worth of their favourite content, they'd likely choose alternatives --
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http [nowtoronto.com]
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More info on this in Geist's latest post, covering the Canadian ISP Association's filing [michaelgeist.ca] to the regu
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There are two types of filtering/throttling/shaping that are often lumped under the banner of net neutrality.
Type 1: Modifying IP traffic based on type of traffic (e.g. web, voip, email, video, bittorrent, etc). But with no consideration of source or destination. For example, all email gets the same treatment.
Type 2: Modifying IP traffic based on source and/or destination. For example, slowing down vide
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Which means that your ssh connection, as well as that VPN to your workplace stand a pretty good chance of getting traffic-shaped. Still cool with that?
First they came for the P2Ps...
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you poor sod (Score:2)
Govt Regulation == Bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Much like the SPAM problem, you'll never be able to legislate the Internet.
Consumers should vote with their money. If ISP#1 is throttling, then stop subscribing. No other ISPs in the area? Get satellite access.
In the mean time, engineers should start working on things like TOR, Freenet, and encryption to ensure that the content on the wires stays free.
In any event, if you allow government to make inroads into what can and can't be legislated online, pretty soon, they'll legislate everything.
This is one Pandora's Box that should not be opened.
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Only recently was I able
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Uh, I'm not sure where you are, but I live in a village and we just got water recently. In fact, we're still on a well and septic tank system because we haven't hooked up to it yet. The people outs
Re:Govt Regulation == Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
How are they going to vote with their wallet? No matter what they choose, they're supporting sub-standard internet. This seems to me a case in which the ISPs need to be regulated because they have a monopoly.
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Really? The lines belong to them do they? Well maybe they should get their lines off of my property. What's that you say? The only way for the system to work is if everyone allows the telephone company a right-of-way on their property? I suppo
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> have to tell a company it isn't allowed to use it's own property as it wants even though it is
> not infringing on anyone's rights?
They might own the fiber, but the overwhelming majority of land it runs across isn't owned by them... it's owned by governmental entities, most of whom took the land from its original owners without compensation. Yeah, lots of fiber was laid along old railroad corridors...
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That approach, while very commendable and principled, isn't enough.
I've written elsewhere about why this is the case [imagicity.com], but in a nutshell it comes down to this: Net Neutrality is a basic precondition to an end-to-end network like the Internet.
Think of it as a law. It is, actually, if you read th
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In my area you can get rogers or bell or various resellers. No wireless, no satellite. Sadly the only reason that we even have resellers available is because the government regulated and forced the greedy bastards to open up the netw
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mod this Anonymous Coward UP (Score:2)
Government Regulation isn't always bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm fortunate to live in an area where there are *two* competing monolithic ISP's, but if they happened to both engage in these practices I'd be hooped.
Re:Government Regulation isn't always bad... (Score:4, Informative)
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Since there are a lot of cabinets out there on the street it's infeasible to colocate.
Strike! (Score:3, Funny)
Writing to Prentice (Score:2)
I'd invite any other Canadian "consumers" who have traffic shaping on their "last mile", to do the same!
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In the UK we have much the same situation, with BT owning nearly all of the last mile cable (and the cable companies have said they can't afford to build any more cable, so most parts of the country can't get that and may never do). BT is under heavy regulation so that must offer access to that at competitive rates equally
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We can purchase DSL from other ISPs, but they rel
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Jim is my MP. When the liberals were in power, he would come out to community events, stand on his (conservative) views, and try to represent the community. He also answered letters and appreciated comments on current issues.
When the Conservative minority took office and he became a cabinet minister, he turned into a corporate-interest zombie. The only thing I've heard from him other than form letters in that time was one reply (eight months after I sent him a letter on the issue), expla
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Hopefully you'll have a chance to remind him and your neighbors, in the next election, how poorly he has responded to the concerns of his constituency (not to mention thousands of others across the country).
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The bill has been quietly sidelined following substantial protest. Of course, it may resurface. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
So, two things to conclude: (1) to his detriment, Prentice as a public servant will attempt to advance the interests of industry groups against public interest, and (2) somewhat to his credit, he is able to back down quickly under public pressure. Keep up the pressure.
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While I was formerly an active PC member, I have no interest in this Conservative Party. They aren't making friends even in places they should be.
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Agreed. I had high hopes for the Conservatives, hoping they would represent a sane alternate to the spend-spend-spend Liberals. A party that represents sane social policies, at the same time advocating fiscal responsibility.
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be room for fiscal conservatives anymore... I can't have the fiscal responsibility without the crazy religious fanaticism, or the endless kowtowing to the elite.
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Reducing the GST instead of reducing income taxes (everywhere else in the world it is recognized this is a poor move for the economy)is perhaps the dumbest m
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You prove yet again that conservatives are utterly ignorant and pretty stupid. Who was it who had the federal (not national - Canada is not a nation) debt ballooning far more than the liberals in the 1980? You guess ed it: Brian Mulroney, of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Who eliminated the deficit following that spending orgy?
Jean Chrétin, of the Liberal Party of Can
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Actually, I was (and still am) generally a NDP supporter, which begs the question of why I voted for the Conservatives in the last election.
In short, I felt that government (regardless of party) was like an ill-mannered child. The only way for a lesson to sink in was to remove their privileges. The Martin government was knee-deep in corruption, and I absolutely do not buy the hogwash that the advertisement scandal didn't go all the way to the highest levels of government. Many peons sacrificed their caree
Conservative economics and internet access (Score:5, Insightful)
While the right wing economists tout the free market as the solution to everything, arguing that an unregulated market is the only way to approach pretty much everything, there are cases where the market is dominated by 1/2/3 players that cannot be avoided. We, as consumers, are not able to vote with our dollars - we have no choice. We did have a choice - Bell was allowing ISPs to resell DSL and manage the data themselves, but when they realized that meant that people (who know/care about such things) were flocking to the unrestricted ISPs, they squashed that avenue to unrestricted net access.
The other competitor, Rogers, hasn't opened their network up to competition (that i know of), so they can do whatever they feel like.
That leaves us with the occasional small wireless isp with leases lines, satellite (slow), or of course, leasing our own line. Yes - we have options, but no, none of them are good for the consumer. Without government regulation, and with the small size of our market (ie: very little competition), the few major ISPs will control our destinies, and it's only a matter of time until they start with tiered data speed.
Web - sure, fast as you'd like, it's highly compressible, proxyable, no big deal.
Email - sure, but you can only have small attachments, but we'd prefer you use our free webmail service.
Music? Only if you buy from our store (or from stores that we have deals with), otherwise, we're going to filter you. Otherwise, we'll limit you.
Video? Only if you buy from our store (or from stores we have deals with). Otherwise, no bandwidth for you.
Overall data? Sure, your unlimited plan will apply, if you shop in our stores. Otherwise, here's a cap. enjoy!
I think the real problem is that Bell/Rogers/etc have been severely overselling their networks without paying the money to upgrade them. Our monthly fees have been slowly creeping up instead of dropping (you'd think I could get high speed internet for cheaper now than I did 10 years ago, but you'd be wrong, for the same level of service). Our connection quality has been dropping. The service level at the ISPs is consistently poor. However, Rogers and Bell are turning out huge profits every quarter. Why? Because they've managed to find a way to provide the minimum of service for the maximum of profit, and their shareholders love it. And ultimately, in todays world, the shareholder is the more important measure of a business than their customers. So long as the share prices stay up, the businesses will continue to do whatever they want. Once the prices start to slip, and they will, or once a better level of competition is introduced/forced, then we might see customer focus becoming a priority.
There are some that say any regulation in business is bad for the economy, that we should let businesses set their policies, and the customers will go where they feel is best. But when there are no reasonable choices, when there is no competition, then the customer loses and big business wins. The government must step in and regulate, until such time as market conditions exist to enable the free market to take a go at managing themselves again.
Positive reinforcement hasn't worked so far, it's time for negative reinforcement. Bad doggy, no treat for you.
$0.02 CDN.
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Funny you'd say that. I have the same experience in Silicon Valley. 8 years ago, I got a 1.5Mb/384Kb connection for about $50. Now I'm getting the same exact line for $20 more (though it's naked instead of coupled with a phone), but line noise is so bad that I'm throttled down to half speed up and down. So
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I'll be moving to Tek Savvy or Wireless Nomad and move my money to those who will be supporting net neutrality.
Business opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
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If not, then, in Canada (and in most parts of the United States, and most other countries for that matter) your ISP will be sending data through wires controlled by either the big telephone regional monopoly of the bit cable regional monopoly. Because those companies own the "last mile" wires.
And they will throttle your traffic. You think you'll be able to stop them? You're w
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They "own" it solely by virtue of the government granting them the right to put up lines FOR THE PURPOSE OF DELIVERING A ***PUBLIC*** SERVICE.
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In an ideal world, yes absolutely, the government should force the phone company to provide real open access to competitors; for all the reasons you listed.
But that hasn't happened. And your ranting (WITH LOTS OF CAPS) isn't going to make it happen. If you have some concrete, realistic suggestions about how to make governments do the right thing, I'd love to hear them. The whole world would love to hear th
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Which leaves satellite or wireless... and that won't get you "unthrottled super speed".
This IS a monopoly. And should, as such, be government regulated.
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Meanwhile back in the US (Score:2)
Thanks, Jim (Score:4, Insightful)
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